


A Big Rock Star

by Filmsterr



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorced Dean Winchester, Fluff, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Middle-Aged Love is Underrated, Musician Dean Winchester, Self-Esteem Issues, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 04:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14512785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filmsterr/pseuds/Filmsterr
Summary: Once upon a time, Dean wanted to be a rockstar.





	A Big Rock Star

Once upon a time, Dean wanted to be a rockstar. His whole life, really, the fantasy persisted. 

Six years old, running around the house, banging on pots and pans like he thought he was a mini Neil Peart. Making Sam put on mock concerts with him while he tried his best to yell along to the Zeppelin tracks he’d already started learning by heart. 

As soon as he could get his hands on them, he started picking up magazines anywhere he could find them, plastering his walls with pictures of all the bands he loved and looked up to. Some days, when the fighting got too loud, he’d lay in bed for hours and stair up at his walls, staring at their faces and thinking of everything they had that he didn’t. Fame, money, girls. That was the end game for Dean. 

Mom thought it was cute. Dad did, too, at first. 

When he got older, it was less the fame that attracted Dean to the idea; more the money then. He liked the idea of making enough money to find some way to get them away- him and Mom and Sam, to someplace far away. Set them up in a house on a beach, somewhere warm and friendly. Some place where Dad wouldn’t even go looking for them.  

And then life hit. 

At least, it felt like a hit. Like a series of punches and kicks that left Dean feeling like someone had dumped him out the back of a van and left him bruised and bloody on the side of the road.

The fire came first. Losing Mom and home in one fell swoop... that was a fucking bitch if anything ever was. 

Moving from place to place didn’t help at all either. Dad would dump them off in a hotel room for couple of weeks at a time while he went out looking for work. Most of the time they spent in the car, no more walls to host the posters of the men Dean so idolized.  

Still, the fantasy lived on. Money more than ever on the front of his mind, every time Dad went out without leaving any bills on the table and Dean had to figure out some way to afford cereal to keep Sammy fed. Fame? Hell, why not. He sure wouldn’t mind someone looking at him like he was anything other than a useless piece of shit. The girls? Well…

Lately had been finding that the girls at school(s) weren’t really doing it for him anymore.He figured it wasn’t a big deal, maybe his tastes were skewering a little older now that he’d matured some. Maybe it was just high school girls that he couldn't get it up for. So he started hanging out around bars, trying to pick up more more mature ladies. 

And sometimes, sure, he noticed that there might be a guy or two who caught his attention at the bar. But, that was normal. At least, he figured. A lot of the time, he had a hard time figuring out if he wanted to emulate them, or... something else. But he spent half the time with a hard dick cramping his jean space, so who the fuck knew. 

It all started to go real belly-up sometime around he was twenty-three. That was right after Sammy up and left for school, when he decided that he couldn’t put up with being around Dean’s pathetic, mopey ass anymore. Dean couldn’t much blame him. 

Dad wasn’t around too much after that either. Without Sam to share the impact, he got pretty bored of ragging on Dean all the time. And Dean was happy to be rid of him, though he scarcely even dared admit that to himself. Truth was Dean was pretty scared at the idea of spending time alone with the old man. 

There was… an incident, which led to a... well. And after that Dad made it clear just what kind of person he wasn’t gonna have for a fucking son. 

So he tried harder. Dean went out and tried to pick up girls. If he could just find one he liked, one whocould get his dick hard enough, then it’d all be okay. If he could find one, then he wasn’t like that. 

One got pregnant. Her name was Lisa. She was a few years older, and she was definitely a fucking babe, Dean knew that for sure. They banged in the bathroom of some sleazy biker bar and Dean didn’t even remember giving her his number, but then she called and she told him she was knocked up and she was pretty sure it was his. 

Pretty sure wasn't really enough for Dean, but it was for Dad. John  leveled him with a mean look when Dean tried to go to him for advice (dumb fuckin' idea _that_ was). He said that a real man would step and do the right thing, and he wanted to know exactly what kind of man Dean thought he was. 

It was kind of funny, how his dad was so happy after they got hitched. It was probably because he never thought he’d have to worry about finding his son again with his dick in one hand and a picture of Jimi Hendrix in the other. 

And he wouldn’t, Dean was fucking sure of that. He might not know how to be the perfect husband, but he was gonna fucking try. It wasn’t Lisa’s fault she ended up strapped to him 'til death do them part, and she shouldn't have to suffer for it. 

It only lasted a couple of years. Before Ben’s eighth birthday they’d already split up, and he took off for the road like it was the only thing he knew how to do. Hell, it _was_ the only thing he knew how to do. 

He picked up odd jobs all over. Most nights he spent in the same shit hotels he’d hated in his teenage years. Always shared a parking lot with some tragic dive bar, only now it was him instead of his dad who sat at the bar pounding Heinekens all night. Normally, the bar would have the promise of live music, some sad assembly of dads who looked like they worked day jobs as plumbers and electricians, and then came right here to the bat to live out their deflated fantasies of making it big. Their wives cheer from the dance floor like a bunch of horned-up teenagers. Dean scoffed and turned away from it. If he stared too long, it made him feel sick. 

Every day he woke up with a new hangover, he felt himself becoming more like his old man. He told himself that's not his worst nightmare, but he still ended up hurling into the toilet anyway.  Who was he trying to kid. 

When he was lucky, he'd get a phone call from Sammy, and that was enough to cheer him up for a week at a time. Dean would do his best to put on a happy voice and make it sound like his life's a fucking breeze. He'd say he's got good work and the new place is like home and he'd always say that he'd just seen Ben.

He almost never saw his kid, actually, and he knew it was all his own fault. If he could get his shit together for not enough to not be ashamed in front of Ben... He told himself that it would be soon, and said the same to Lisa, and he kept hoping that 'soon' would come one day. 

His nights were still spent in bars, but now he hit on younger ladies. He spent more time than effort trying to weasel his way into girls' panties, with his success ratio staying more about at a solid 50-50. And maybe, sometimes, he went for the girls he knew would say no. It made it easier. Then he could go home alone and think of whoever he wanted when he blew his load into some already-crusty motel room sheet. 

He'd kill to have a home again. 

 

One time, when he was driving around the streets of some podunk middle-of-nowhere town, he was lying in the backseat of Baby, trying to get a little shut-eye, when he saw her. She was sitting there in a shop window, a little beat-up with a few scratches, but no worse for the wear. Dean scrounged up the tiny bit of money he had lying around that he didn't have to send back to Lisa, and he walked right into that pawn shop, and he bought his first guitar.

He spent forever trying to think of the right name for her. Something good, solid, but nothing to make Baby jealous. In the end, he couldn't think of anything, so he told himself he'd come back to it later, when he'd made enough progress to merit it. He sat in the back seat and tinkered around, trying to figure out which string made which notes, and how to turn them into chords to make a song. That was the day that Dean figured out that for all the watching and listening and obsessing he'd done, he didn't have the first fucking clue how guitars actually worked. 

He didn't get a chance to pick out a name before she was gone. It killed him when he had to hock her again. But he'd lost another job and he was running out of cash for places to stay. Plus, Lis had called and said that Ben wanted to start playing soccer. Dean may not have had the opportunity to pursue what he wanted growing up, but he'd be damned if his kid was gonna have to go through that same thing.

So thus began a cycle that ran for years. It was like a bad relationship, on-again, off-again. Some real Ross and Rachel crap. Whenever he had they money laying around he'd go buy a guitar- not the same one as before, but whatever one he found that he could afford- and then when funds ran low again he'd sell it to pay for food, for beer, to lend Sam some money or buy something for Ben. 

He never kept one long enough to really learn anything, which was fucking frustrating. Sometimes he didn't know why he bothered anyways. The older he got, the sadder the whole endeavor seemed. What, was he going to do, get discovered? Become a some big shot rock star at thirty, thirty-five years old?

It was pathetic, and about a million degrees out of his league. He was a high school dropout that couldn't even hold a steady job for a couple of months. Even if he could have, at some point in his miserable life, had any talent- he didn't deserve it. 

At a certain point, he would have just been happy to have someone look at him, look him in the eyes. Someone to notice him. And god damn if a little spooning wouldn't be nice. 

He spent a lot of long, lonely nights wondering why he ever left Ben and Lisa. Why he couldn't have just stuck it out, pretended to be happy. It'd be better than this useless existence. Better than shuffling from barstool to barstool, looking for something to make it all matter. To make anything matter. 

He also never kept any one guitar long enough to get attached to it. Which was pretty much the same along the board with most things in his life. 

  


But things were different now. 

Now... well, damn. Now he was one of those old dads he was making fun of back in his twenties. 

It was all Cas' fault. He's the one who swept in out of god damn nowhere and made things so... so easy. Things were so easy with Cas. They were so easy that it made Dean look back and see how difficult he'd been making things for no reason at all. 

"You want to learn to play guitar?" Cas asked one day after he'd been listening to Dean lament the fact that he was completely useless with a musical instrument. "We'll sign you up for lessons."

Dean scoffed. "Yeah, guitar lessons. I'll go after school. C'mon. What am I, fourteen? "

"No, you're forty," Cas turned on him with a scold, "And you've got a head thick enough to prove it."

After that, Cas implied that if Dean wasn't going to even consider it, then there would be a sharp decrease in a certain Thursday night activity that Dean spent all week looking forward to. 

So, Dean started taking guitar lessons. And, somewhat unexpectedly, he got _good_. 

Twenty years he'd been whining about the fact that he'd never gotten to live out his musical fantasies, and all he had to do was go see a scrawny kid in a strip mall once a week. Go figure.

But that was exactly it. Cas always knew exactly how to fix all of his problems. Dean would spend hours, day complaining about some bullshit- big or small, it didn't matter. Then Cas would come in with his big brain and his grown up attitude, and everything was just.... better. 

Dean had a stomach ache? "Drink some water. There are other beverages besides whiskey and coffee, you know."

A problem with a co-worker? "Talk to Rufus about it. That's his job- they didn't hire a supervisor for no reason."

Couldn't open a jar? "Smack it with a knife. And stop pouting."

He always cut right through the bullshit. He told Dean what was what, what to do. And Dean loved it. Loved him. 

He'd thought for a long time that he lived his life the way he did because he liked the independence, craved the open road with no attachments. Turns out he was wrong. He just hadn't found the right person who wanted to stick around and tell his dumb ass what to do. Tell him how to be happy. 

But Cas didn't only put Dean in his place. Nah, if that was all it was, it would probably be a little too close to home (literally) for Dean not to think he just ended up with another version of his dad in some twisted Oedipal complex thing. 

Cas could be real soft when he wanted to be; which he did, a lot. He liked to whisper soft praises into Dean's hair while he fell asleep; liked to hold his hands and kiss his knuckles when they were bruised from a long day on the job; liked to smile and compliment him to their friends like he hung the damn moon and built a ladder to the stars. Dean pretended to hate the attention- but, well if he was a shit guitar player, he was a much worse actor. 

Yeah, shit was pretty good with Cas around. He and Dean even cleaned up their act and got a little place together. A house. Dean had a _house-_ his first once since he’d lost his mom. Sometimes he thought back to those dirty motel dumps and the nights spent sleeping roadside in his car. He really, truly, couldn't believe his luck. 

It had a little backyard where they had their friends over for beer and burgers and where Dean swore one day he was gonna set up a karaoke machine just to piss Cas off (and maybe, sometimes, he would do that version of "I'm Too Sexy" that makes Cas laugh in a way that Dean could listen to for the rest of his life on repeat without getting tired of it).

Ben came to visit in the summer and on school vacations. Next month, Dean was going teach him how to drive. Take him out onto a dirt road and put him behind the wheel of his Baby. He could already feel the uncontainable pride bubbling up behind his throat. It wasn't unlike the feeling that sat in his gut when he saw the way Cas and Ben got on like a pair of freaking gangbusters. Or Cas and Sam. Or Cas and pretty much anyone on the very short list on people that Dean gave a damn about. 

His dad wasn't on that list. In fact, wherever his dad was, Dean didn't have a clue. And he really didn't intend to spend a second's energy thinking about it. 

All his energy now was pretty much reserved for one guy. Dean figured, Cas had single-handedly turned him from a pathetic sad sack into somebody who actually _liked_ to wake up in the morning. That in itself was a damn miracle. So Dean resolved to try and pay back as much of that as he could. 

Mostly, that meant mowing the lawn and semi-regular blowjobs. Dean had no complaints about that particular arrangement. 

So there he was: on the wrong side of forty, strapped down in suburbia... and he couldn't be happier. And to top it all off: he was in a band. With a bunch of dads. 

Fate sure was one funny fuckin' lady.

They played the Roadhouse a couple times a month. It was the same crowd of regulars, but they people seemed pretty happy with what they did. Dean had a blast playing with the guys, and it felt good to be up on stage. It was different than he'd been imagining for the past forty years... but at least he knew for himself was the reality felt like. Which was worth about a thousand times as much as some low-rent fantasy.

Especially when it included Cas looking up at him from the dance floor, every single time, without fail. Cheering for Dean with a smile on his face, shouting like a horned-up teenager. 

**Author's Note:**

> some little headcanons i didn't get to include because tbh it seemed like too much work: 
> 
> \- Cas is divorced (from Meg) so neither he nor Dean has an interest in getting married again  
> \- both of them are very chill about this, no angst  
> \- Claire is Cas' daughter and she and Ben have a very begrudingly cute sometimes-step-sibling relationship  
> \- Dean's band is essentially based off all those convention posts you see with Jensen singing like a cowboy
> 
> aaaand that's it. I think. Even though thats probably already too much for a 2k word story??? thanks for reading. 
> 
> oh! don't forget to stop by my tumblr: https://blueskies-and-applepies.tumblr.com


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